News

From financial to medical information, our most private data is increasingly online -- and so are the cyber criminals who seek to sabotage the information systems that support the data. But while the number of cyber crimes has steadily risen over the years, the number of cyber security experts needed to stop them has not kept pace.

The term “virtual time” typically conjures up images of space age time machines and “Back to the Future” movies, but the reality of virtual time within computer systems isn’t just something of the future. Rather, it’s an old concept in computer science, with new applications that researchers at the Information Trust Institute have been developing.

ITI Research Scientist Sibin Mohan was recently awarded a three-year, $600,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to work on integrating security into embedded real-time systems in a fundamental way.

CSL Acting Director Klara Nahrstedt, the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor of Computer Science, will be inducted in the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Germany’s foremost academic society, in March 2014. Nahrstedt’s selection to Leopoldina’s membership is in recognition of her scientific achievements and impact on science.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of almost $1.6 million to a team of cybersecurity experts from the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) project. The three-year effort will focus on improving the security of critical infrastructure such as electrical grids and other utilities.

Ameren Illinois today opened a new $3.3 million testing facility that will help facilitate research and development of smart grid technologies and support the state’s economic development and job creation goals. The Technology Applications Center (TAC) will offer collaborative opportunities between ITI researchers and the utility.

Shade almost always creeps into conversations about solar power. What happens on cloudy days when a rooftop array isn’t producing enough energy for someone’s solar-equipped bungalow? What about the mobile devices that might be operated in remote, wooded research stations where consistent sunlight is never available?

In June, the Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) project held its biannual summer school in St. Charles, Ill. The event drew a record 173 attendees, who came from academia, industry and government for a week-long course on cybersecurity for energy delivery systems, with a focus on the power grid.

NP-View was developed specifically to automate the analysis of utilities' computer networks, offering advanced modeling capabilities and a set of features that support compliance with industry regulations.

In the last four years, solar generation in the U.S. has more than doubled, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. In that same time, the costs of solar power systems have dropped by 80 percent.
As interest in solar energy is increasing, the Illinois Center for a Smarter Electric Grid (ICSEG) is helping lead renewable energy research with the new installation of an experimental solar array on the south side of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus.

William H. Sanders, a Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering, has been named interim head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a researcher in and founding director of the Information Trust Institute.

An estimated 137.4 million cyber attacks took place in 2012 alone, according to an IBM report, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has forewarned of a coming “cyber Pearl Harbor.” And the need for more trustworthy systems is only likely to grow, as we increasingly rely on information technology to power our most critical infrastructure.

Andreas C. Cangellaris, the head of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been chosen to be the next dean of the College of Engineering.